Re:Software Licenses and Failed States
by geofft on Wednesday May 18, 2016 @10:24AM
(#11722151)
The interesting question is why would anyone make such a contradictory statement? Why would they make the code physically available to everyone and yet make it legally unavailable?
Why is that contradictory? That's how every piece of sample code in a book works; the book generally has a copyright statement at the beginning and no license on the code. That's how, for instance, Microsoft's sample code explicitly works: there's a license that clearly states you can't use it unless you make nontrivial modifications.
That's also how code under non-simple-permissive licenses works. If I post something under the AGPL, it's legally unavailable for many purposes. If I post it under GPLv2-only (as I would default to for, e.g., a kernel module), it's legally unavailable to even GPLv3-only software.
In my experience it's been pretty easy to ask the author and say "Hi, I'd like to use your code under this license, here's my use case, can you provide it under that license?", and a good chunk of the time they'll say "Sure." For that question, it doesn't really matter whether the software is under any license at all to start with.
Don't compare those of us living under the rule of international law adopted in Berne in 1886 with people in failed states.
Why is that contradictory? That's how every piece of sample code in a book works; the book generally has a copyright statement at the beginning and no license on the code. That's how, for instance, Microsoft's sample code explicitly works: there's a license that clearly states you can't use it unless you make nontrivial modifications.
That's also how code under non-simple-permissive licenses works. If I post something under the AGPL, it's legally unavailable for many purposes. If I post it under GPLv2-only (as I would default to for, e.g., a kernel module), it's legally unavailable to even GPLv3-only software.
In my experience it's been pretty easy to ask the author and say "Hi, I'd like to use your code under this license, here's my use case, can you provide it under that license?", and a good chunk of the time they'll say "Sure." For that question, it doesn't really matter whether the software is under any license at all to start with.
Don't compare those of us living under the rule of international law adopted in Berne in 1886 with people in failed states.